Many analysts continue to concentrate on individual terrorists and their network of mosques from which they emerge. Many assume they represent the most serious security threats facing the country–often termed “Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” But the Administration’s recent Asian trip illustrates the much more important, and more dangerous, side of the US security and foreign policy equation–good old fashioned states. That landscape looks increasingly dark.
For example, the Chinese have down-rated the US currency, again, even though the PRC is currently in default of some $300 billion it owes thousands of American bond holders. A new report from the congressionally mandated US China Commission warns of current PRC missile deployments having the capability to conduct massive strikes against our military bases throughout the Western Pacific. And not more than a few weeks ago, Global Security Network reported a State Department official calmly noting that Peking has been helping Iran with both its ballistic missiles and its nuclear weapons program. And not more than a few months ago, the Secretary of State correctly pushed back on Chinese hegemonic aims in the South China Sea over oil resources. Yet official US policy is to consider Peking a “cooperative” country with respect to US efforts to stop the proliferation of weapons technology to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In Japan, the government there remains increasingly worried that massive US money printing by the US Treasury and Federal Reserve is simply pumping up the price of commodities, especially oil, which remains at near $85 a barrel in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Oil unfortunately fuels the exchequer of most terror sponsoring countries and their allies.
As other raw material prices also approach or exceed all time highs, this will unfortunately expand whatever built-in inflation protection future interest rates will contain with adverse affects on US-Japanese trade and economic growth. Add to that a fear that even with interest rates at say a relatively low 5%, US debt-service costs could easily rise to $1 trillion annually, further worrying the Japanese government.
On top of which a new UN report finally declares that North Korea has been selling nuclear technology to such countries as Iran, Syria and Burma, including missiles, all in violation of UN resolutions 1784 and 1874. Russia now says North Korea is a graver concern than Iran, even while its ally China delayed for some 6 months this UN report. All these developments certainly are cause for concern in Tokyo for a number of reasons. First, North Korea continues unabated its missile work and nuclear weapons work; and second, while North Korea continues to proliferate, it apparently remains seemingly outside the scope of any Chinese or Russian obligation to pressure Pyongyang to curtail its underground nuclear commerce.
In the Republic of Korea, the US sought to secure an amended trade deal with Seoul. But the efforts fell through as the ROK countered with its own toughened proposals. Ironically, trade deals South Korea has sought and concluded with other industrialized countries such as the EU and Canada have mirrored to a large degree the original pact negotiated by the previous US administration. But it has remained on the table in the US Congress without action. If as the current House Speaker notes, the American people are strongly asking that the Congress concentrate on “creating jobs”, one wonders why such a trade pact wasn’t approved months, even years ago? Especially as we watch a similar deal being reached with Canada which was quickly followed up with some $45 billion in investment deals and further business agreements between the two nations.
In Indonesia, the administration unfortunately continued the narrative that Israeli action–settlements for example–are a major impediment to the “peace process.” This was followed with explanations that Islam is a religion of peace, and that the US is simply fighting certain “irrational extremists” but not Islam in general.
Note, however, the incongruity of these two views. First, we are led to believe that much of the terrorism directed against the US, our allies, (including Israel) and Muslim people everywhere, is motivated by a set of “substantive grievances”, of which the lack of a Palestinian state is number one. And we are then led to believe further that “extremists”–who by nature we have termed irrational–will lay down their suicide vests and their car bombs and their explosives and their gratuitous murdering simply if there is genuine progress towards a “Palestinian state,” much as former President Clinton claimed recently.
But these two views are totally at odds not only with each other but also with the facts. The terrorism we face is primarily state financed, sponsored, trained and armed. Syria, for example, is a former Soviet client state. It is now a client and partner with Russia and Iran. It has effectively destroyed the independence of Lebanon, has transferred major weapons systems to Hezbollah, has murdered top Lebanese government officials, and was building a nuclear facility with North Korean technology and technicians and Iranian cash.
But we as a country–remember the visits to Damascus by Senator Kerry and Speaker Pelosi among many others–continue to blather on about Syria being a peace partner. And the UN International Atomic Energy Administration–and its able Director-General–wring their hands about conducting a “demand inspection” in Syria because of President Assad’s refusal to allow its suspected nuclear sites from being inspected. Some peace partner!
The terrorism and weapons of mass destruction proliferation we face is concentrated among what the former head of the Northern Alliance referred to as a “poisonous coalition.” This terror cartel consists of Syria, Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, and North Korea, their affiliated proxy terror groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, Abu Sayef, among others, and affiliated financiers, wealthy sheiks, mullahs and mosques, all with the aim of establishing some form of hegemony over some parts of the world, but with the central goal of harming and eventually destroying the power of the United States and its allies to support freedom and liberty.
While significant progress has been made in enacting further sanctions against Iran, including a major European oil trading firm and Daimler-Benz, too often our policy toward Tehran strikes both our allies and our adversaries as incoherent. For example, much has been made of the fact that Iran now wishes to sit down and “discuss things.” How nice, except for the fact that they do not want to sit down and talk about their nuclear program!
As Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council notes, this is “talking ’til we glow in the face”, (November 12th, Washington Times) as Iran “is angling for talks to discuss the possibility of eventually having more talks that might at some point touch upon its nuclear program”.
But what do we think we should have expected? Since Iran is a prime terror sponsoring state, and since we believe that terrorism is chiefly the result of “grievances” held by those conducting the very terrorism we seek to end, why shouldn’t the Iranians sit down with us and talk about their grievances with the “Great Satan?” After all, they can say, your smart people at the Washington Post wrote a book devoted chiefly to the proposition that the Mullahs came to power as a result of the US support for a coup in Iran in 1954. So certainly you agree “America is to blame!”
When US and allied forces seized the laptop computer of a key FARC commander in the jungles along the border with Columbia, members of the media expressed surprise–and doubt as to the material we found–that the communist guerrillas were working with President Chavez of Venezuela and Hezbollah terrorists to import weapons from Russia through Mirabella, and with sufficient training, seek to blow up the oil pipelines carrying crude oil from Mexico to the United States. Think what we have here: two terror groups including a drug cartel, and two terrorist states, working cooperatively to harm the United States. As I asked during a speech on this subject at Johns Hopkins University on October 28th, 2010, what does all this have to do with a Palestinian state? Absolutely nothing.
We are in a titanic struggle with states which share none of our love of liberty, freedom, or constitutional republican government. They seek power, revenge, resources and hegemonic empire. Talk won’t get us to where we want to go. Remember, Syria said nothing while it assassinated its way through Lebanon’s political culture; set up a guerilla army in the midst of a sovereign country aimed at the heart of Israel; while also transferring weapons including Scud ballistic missiles to its proxy terrorist ally Hezbollah. The United States, on the other hand, repeatedly said we would not accept such actions. But in our many silent reactions we said something else, loud and clear.
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